Waiting Waiting Waiting

Well, the wait continues. We are still waiting for that one envelope to come in the mail. Yesterday, for some strange reason, there was no mail delivery to the orphanage at all and today, when Igor went to the post office to find out if the mail was there, he still hit a dead end. From what I understand, we know the paper was posted in Maxim's birth town. There's some way Igor was able to confirm that, but it hasn't arrived here yet. Soooooooo, we wait.

Sometimes, when we finish our visits with Maxim at 1 p.m. (lunch time, followed by a nap/rest from 2-4), we have to stay at the orphanage until Igor can come pick us up. This has given us the opportunity to get to know several of the teenagers better each day.

They like to come see us out on the grounds and when they see us sitting in the lobby area. I pull out my "trusty" phrase book and they are so patient with us. Sometimes, they'll gather around another teen who knows a little English, ask how to say something, and then come back to us. They are really neat kids. Very friendly.

Getting to know them better makes me rethink in some ways what they really need. A family is a wonderful blessing and definitely God's ideal design. No doubt. Yet these kids who either have no contact or very little contact with their birth families are still blessed to be where they are in some ways. They don't live a life of physical abundance but they have three meals a day (although they sure are rushed in and out of the cafeteria), shelter, fellowship with each other and several caretakers who genuinely care about them, etc.

Today, we looked through our little photo album with some of the teens and they came upon an exterior shot of our house. Understand that our house is small by American standards, originally built as a three bedroom, one bath ranch. Nothing fancy. But they were visibly and audibly impressed when they saw that picture. They see we are abundantly blessed even though a typical American might not see it that way. Good to have these kids set our perspective in place.

One suggestion for those coming to Ukraine, do not depend on a phrase book to get you through. These can be helpful, but mostly for tourists. A good English/Russian (or English/Ukrainian depending on what region you're headed to) dictionary is a must.

With Maxim, we are spending a little time recognizing numbers, both written and spelled, as well as starting to look at the alphabet. I wrote these out this morning and he likes to repeat the numbers with us. We did better, too, just balancing how we use our time with him. Sometimes Daniel chose where to go outside. Instead of letting him eat every food item we brought today, we encouraged him to split the banana with us which he did.

Blessings to all of you as you head into Thanksgiving week soon. Enjoy.